IDX site providers costs $50–300+/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,800 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$50–300+/mo is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Listcraft: the pay-once alternative
Listcraft does the same core job for $39, once. Self-hosted property listing site with galleries, maps, MLS-style search and lead capture.
| Listcraft | IDX site providers | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $50–300+/mo |
| Year-1 cost | $39 | $600–3,600+ |
| Your data | SQLite file + photos on your disk | Their servers |
| Leads | Straight to your inbox | Shared, resold, or pay-per-lead |
| Branding | Your domain, logo, colors | Their subdomain and templates |
| Cancel penalty | None | Site and SEO disappear |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Listcraft costs less than a single month at the cheap end of an IDX provider — every month after year one is money you keep.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need IDX site providers's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Listcraft is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Listcraft — $39, once
Self-hosted property listing site with galleries, maps, MLS-style search and lead capture.